Brains are about to supplant cleavages as the sexiest thing in pop, allegedly, and this Cambridge graduate will be leading the bluestocking charge. Polly Paulusma's marketing campaign flags up her first in English, casting her as a 4Real version of the student who was made over into a rock chick in Faking It.

Excellent as it is to have literacy back in style, Polly's London debut revived the ancient view that bookish girls tend towards acoustic winsomeness. Syntactically correct winsomeness, but fey and annoying all the same. After an hour of knock-kneed melancholia ("I've danced with vagabonds and Cambridge dons, philosophers and slackers ... "), you wanted to shake her until her red Alice band flew off - but she'd only have written a song about it. As Jamie Cullum's current support act, she must be convincing his middle-England audience that top-up fees can't come too soon.

Backed by subtle bass, percussion and trumpet, the unadorned folk-pop sounded like wistful meanderings written in an oak-beamed kitchen. Paulusma didn't lack backbone, dealing confidently with a heckler, but she assumes that simply baring her soul makes a show. Sassier combatants like Amy Winehouse have grasped the importance of grabbing the crowd by the scruff; by contrast, Paulusma's emotions began and ended at "pensive".

Her debut, Scissors in My Pocket, was thoroughly hosed-down, breathy slowies like Dark Side interspersed by fit-of-temper noisy ones such as One Day. None of them seemed to be about anything in particular. There were no stories, no edge, and if she hadn't told us All Is Well was about a dead friend, we wouldn't have known.

This lengthy set didn't shed any light on why she's been compared with Joni Mitchell. Paulusma's primary problem is that she doesn't have the blues. Unless it's the Bugger, Sainsbury's Has Just Run Out of Polenta Blues.

· Supporting Jamie Cullum at Shepherds Bush Empire, London, tonight and tomorrow. Box office: 0870 771 2000.